I See Stars
by Janice G
Summary: Clarisse McClallen is more than just a crazy, dead girl; She has made a contribution to this world and she did not regret it even at the her last moments. Rate T for character death.


Clarisse never walked on the edge of the road. It felt like a confinement forced onto those who liked to walk, to have to walk on the edge of things, both literally and figuratively. She always walked in the center of the sidewalk, which was now growing thinner and thinner as years went by. Now the sidewalk was just a grey slither of paper beside the road, so Clarisse walked in the middle of the street. She had diverged from the path of her and Mr. Montag's usual walking sessions, but the breeze felt good so she went exploring. It brushed against her skin with a gentleness of a mother and she smiled at herself - exploring was a stereotype of being crazy.

"Why are you here again?" A voice called from behind. Mr. Montag had turned the corner and was standing under the glaring streetlamp, light reflecting back from a silvery surface of pavement. Clarisse spun around, a sheet of long hair whispered by her sides. Dark eyes curved like crescents on her pale face as thin lips drew together into a smile.

"Hello, Mr. Montag!" She answered, gentle footsteps toward the man on the sidewalk. His figure was small and dark against the milky light of the streetlamp. The edge of his figure seemed to glow, and Clarisse watched with wonder and curiosity.

"How was your psychiatric session?" He asked.

Clarisse tilted her head as she entered into the streetlight's tent of warmth, "I just made up some stuff." she said, "Then I went to sit under a bridge I had discovered near his office. The riverbed smelled like moss. Bet you've never smelled moss."

"No, I have not."

"You should try sitting under a bridge then," She said, "Do you have a favorite place to go when you're bored?"

Mr. Montag thought for an unnecessarily long time.

"No, I don't."

Clarisse smiled. She could tell from the flicker in his eyes that he was lying.

"Well, I do." She said, "I used to live far, far away, nearly outside the city. There was a river and a lot of stars. I would walk on the train tracks and look at the sky. A friend usually joined me - we're both crazy. It was really fun."

"Oh, really?" Mr. Montag said doubtfully, a humorous rise in the brows, "I thought you were antisocial."

"He was too, or at least he became antisocial after becoming friends with me. Ironic, isn't it? My uncle says it very much is. I liked watching him because everyday he seemed a little different...Oh! He used to be just like you, Mr. Montag. He used to always be surprised by what I say and listen to me with really wide eyes like I'm crazy." she smiled. "Which I am."

Mr. Montag didn't answer. His silence had kept him frozen, so Clarisse went on.

"Then one day he turned to look at me, and I was already watching him. He and I sat by the train tracks, and do you know what's beautiful, apart from the dew on the grass and the quiet whistle of the train in a distance?"

"What?"

"The stars that reflected in his eyes."

The air was delicate in the eve of their silence. Mr. Montag glanced at the ground; for the hundredth time Clarisse had took his words away from him.

"Then what happened?" He asked after a long time, true curiosity surfaced, awkward and unused to being on the face of a 30-year old mask.

"I moved away." She answered simply.

Mr. Montag met her eyes then, and Clarisse saw something change. It was a flicker, like the first attempts of lighting a fire from a match, like the sputtering of an engine when someone tried to start it for the first time in years. It was red and hot, splitting apart the mold society had tried to fit him into, melting like plastic contacting heat. But it was a quiet change, a change that put Mr. Montag into a reverie, listening fully to the idiot babbling within him that had been confined into a box since the beginning of time. In his eyes there was a flame that was about to start but hadn't found the right time to burst out.

They looked like stars and Clarisse thought they looked quite nice.

"Good night!" She called, and left before Mr. Montag returned to earth.

* * *

Clarisse didn't go home. The night was too fascinating for her to go home just yet. She followed the road outside of the neighborhood that she and Mr. Montag lived in - continuing on her journey from before her encounter with said man. She was excited to see where she would wound up, and she watched the leaves spin at her feet as she glided down the middle of the road.

Far, far away she heard buzzing, not from that of a Seashell radio but from that of nature, an under-appreciated symphony losing more and more of its purpose as more radios clamped down on the people's ears. The wind had a voice, barely above a whisper, a finger against transparent lips, carrying on the most recent last thoughts from those who had died from their loneliness but didn't know it. The man on the moon looked at her, Clarisse McClellan, the most peculiar girl on earth, and smiled instead of twist his face the way most people did.

Looks fascinated Clarisse; they were a reflection of the broken hearts that existed in pieces within the depths of their owner's beings.

Looks from her classmates in school, lips upturned in vicious smiles, twirling in their hands thin, sharp knives - not knowing that back in the day kids held books in their hands instead. Looks of disgust from adults with jaded faces, tired of living a routine, a lie, but had no voice because the thought never surfaced in their damaged, warped minds. Looks of absence from those who didn't even know they had looked, Seashells hooked like parasites onto their body, swallowing them whole like beasts in the night, clawing and eating them up like they worth nothing more than food. Looks from her psychiatrist that left her feeling so bare she felt the need to pile lies upon lies in order to satisfy his searching eyes. Looks from firemen and officials that displayed their frustrations as they weren't able to fix her, weren't able to fit her into the same plastic "standard" of this society that they had destroyed with their bare hands. Looks from her family that were both fond but bitter-sweet, knowing that they had dragged Clarisse into the life of an outcast, of a hopeless case that was rejected from this world, entirely alone.

Then there were the looks from the wandering ones, from those that brushed passed Clarisse as she walked by but turned their heads back for a second glance of her figure, their eyes wide as if they have found something that they didn't know they had been searching their whole lives for; wanting something, _anything_ , they were able to compare her to. But they couldn't compare her to anything, and the memory of her would become a tug at their hearts, yanking and nagging and bugging them to start thinking, to start aching for pages in their hands, to start searching for the words that had slipped through their fingers so many lifetimes ago. Then she would see them again, and something would change, and it would be like the sky cleared and the stars glowed when she realized she was the source of this alteration...

...Which was why they took him away from her; a confrontation to her family that if they didn't move to this part of town, they would send everyone they knew into an abyss of insanity, where they would be forced to burn thousands and thousands of books with their own hands, or even burn with them if anybody saw fit. Her family obeyed, butterflies locked in bland, white cages, and suddenly among them lived firemen and doctors and lawyers who had machines to do all their work. Suddenly Clarisse couldn't hear herself think until she was outside, breathing air sick with the grease of kerosene, watching as dead leaves swirled by her feet, coated with the ash of dying books that had been burned for mass cremations - And it pained her to have to say that.

Never did she find out the boy's name, the boy that she had grown so attached to but had only known for a fleeting time. It was just a fateful encounter, and many more after that. She only remembered that his hair was bright and his eyes were clear; Long lashes brushed against his cheekbones when he blinked, shying away when she offered to hold his hand under the stars. She was the reason he had changed, that much she knew. She didn't know if it was for the better, but under the luminous moonlight she had saw him smile for the first time, and that was enough.

In a distance a beetle was speeding toward her, and when she finally heard it was too late. She had ran out of time as the world spun in a frenzy, and the next thing she knew her long hair was splayed on the hard, ashen floor; her skull's only cushion against the cold, hard ground.

The beetle continued on with no care in the world, and Clarisse could feel nothing but the warm liquid on her face, chest, down her sides. Life was bleeding out of her, and her vision blurred, her body numbed. The air around her froze in agony, pale, white dress staining into crimson red. Nobody was going to notice a teenage girl dying in oblivion unless they also went exploring, but everybody seemed too normal these days - There was no way she could make it in time for a paramedic...

..But she didn't regret a thing. Mr. Montag already had a fire burning in his heart, and she had contributed to it. The boy with the bright hair and pretty eyes held a dandelion in his hand, yellow powdered all over his chin as he looked to her with a twinkle in his glances - her feelings were returned. Her peculiar family had told her many times before that she, despite of all her craziness, was the best daughter they could ever have. Clarisse McClellan had created a small, glowing happiness in this world, and it was worth it a million lifetimes in this place that seemed much too cold and much too dark.

Besides, as her glistening eyes closed, white stars filled her pitch dark vision and it looked quite nice.

 **END.**

* * *

A/N - This was an assignment for my English class, to imitate the author's style of writing and created a "missing scene."

Reviews are appreciated.

~Ume-chan


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